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Explore Altium's Resource hub to discover content from blog posts and design guides to technical white papers, all gathered together for your convenience and written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

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PCB design review Online PCB Design Review with Altium 365 You can design a PCB any way you like, but if it doesn’t pass a PCB design review and manufacturability checks, then it will never become a real board. A PCB design review is about more than just checking DRCs, it’s about designing to satisfy your manufacturer’s capabilities and processes. PCB design reviews also give the design team a chance to examine manufacturing files and deliverables for any errors before sending data in for fabrication and Read Article
Increase Your Productivity with Streamlined Design Tools How to Make a DXF File a Different Format With Altium Designer Considering switching to a new design software? Wondering how to make a DXF file modernized? Tired of working in a command line interface just to complete simple design tasks? Instead of using an antiquated workflow, Altium Designer makes using your CAD, data management, analysis, and deliverable generation tools easy. Altium Designer also gives you access to file formats from your other design and CAD programs. You’ll be able to use DXF, SCH Read Article
New Altium Designer Home Page and Learning Program With every release, we try to make our users more productive in what they do every day. One way to achieve this is to keep improving the product, and we will, of course, continue to focus on that. What we realized, however, is that many of our users don't fully take advantage of all the capabilities already available in Altium Designer. We have a lot of users who are just starting with Altium Designer, but even some of our experienced users do Read Article
29:18 Tips & Tricks: Board Shape Creation Being able to design a board in your ECAD environment doesn’t mean that it is manufacturable in real life. You Watch Video
31:31 Transmission Line Impedance Calculation With Altium Designer 20 Today’s PCBs contain many transmission lines. Combine this with increased clock frequencies and data rates and the result is a critical challenge to high-speed design. Neglecting these dynamics can undermine product development by compromising performance, power consumption, EMC/EMI compliance, and more - leading to delayed design cycles and opening gaps that can be exploited by your competition. Hone your high-speed design skills by joining us as we discuss the typical transmission lines encountered in today’s designs, the PCB variables that affect impedance, as well as how to create, calculate, and design transmission lines in Altium Designer. Learn how to maximize the built in SIMBEOR® engine by Simberian to craft impedance profiles and manage transmission lines in your designs. This Live Webinar recording covers the following: Current trends in electronics development PCB transmission line model and impedance calculations Transmission line with specified impedance in Altium Designer Don’t pass up on this opportunity to experience the industry’s best in class design experience! Watch Video
18:27 Product Overview: Altium Concord Pro There are many risks if your library and component data are not managed efficiently and effectively. Inefficiency occurs when multiple Watch Video
39:34 ECAD-MCAD CoDesign with Altium CoDesigner Modern devices have dense layouts in shrinking enclosures. Fitting and mounting a PCB into an enclosure while taking cooling, cabling Watch Video
Design Tools to Take You from ECAD to MCAD Seamlessly Seamless ECAD/MCAD PCB Data Integration Step up to the unified environment of Altium Designer and leave behind the problems of trying to force different ECAD and MCAD tools to work together. ALTIUM DESIGNER The most powerful, modern and easy-to-use PCB design tool for professional use. Are you tired of the problems of maintaining separate ECAD and MCAD CAD environments? Have you had your fill in trying to get your ECAD and MCAD systems and software tools to transfer accurate design Read Article
Step Up Into Altium Designer from PCAD Step Up Into Altium Designer from PCAD The original goal of PCAD, to give PCB designers the best tools possible, lives on today in Altium. Altium Designer is made for designers like you and will import your legacy PCAD designs so you can continue your work. ALTIUM DESIGNER CAD software that will continue through the years. Back in 1982, an innovative new PCB design software CAD tool called P-CAD was introduced to the world. This PCAD PCB design tool quickly outgrew its competition and Read Article
Using Altium Designer Supported File Types Using Altium Designer Supported File Types Just as you design your home environment to enhance your quality of life you can customize your work environment to improve the quality of your work. Although a comfortable chair can provide a relaxing ambiance while designing PCBs, the most important feature for generating quality work is the comfort level you feel with your PCB software design tool. Altium Designer is designed to provide the greatest capability coupled with exceptional Read Article
PCB Design Tools Enhanced with an Advanced Free Gerber Editor PCB Design Tools Enhanced with an Advanced Free Gerber File Editor To successfully manufacture today’s challenging PCB designs, you need to be able to create the latest Gerber X2 file formats in your design tool’s free Gerber file maker online. ALTIUM DESIGNER Getting manufacturing output files out is a breeze with the right CAD software. For over 30 years the printed circuit board design and manufacturing industries have relied on Gerber files to transfer PCB image information from design to manufacturing. This Read Article
Chris Carlson's Time Saving Tips for PCB Design Chris Carlson's Time Saving Tips for PCB Design In this podcast episode, Chris Carlson, Senior Field Application Engineer at Altium, shares the kind of indispensable PCB design tips & tricks one can only get with 23-years of experience! Watch now! Read Article
Current Transformers: How To Project PCB Current Transformers: How To Project If you need to measure the current from an AC source, a current transformer can be a low cost, accurate option. You can find current transformers designed specifically for anything between 50/60Hz power line applications and much higher frequencies that are more suitable for industrial/scientific machinery or process monitoring. Current transformers are non-contact and non-invasive, meaning that you do not need to run AC power through your Read Article
PCB Core vs. Prepreg Material: What Designers Need to Know PCB Core vs. Prepreg Material: What Designers Need to Know I sometimes get questions from designers that want to know more about the PCB material selection and manufacturing process. Although I’m not a manufacturer, it behooves designers to understand something about the materials they have available when working on a new project. One question I get is on the exact differences between PCB core vs. prepreg materials. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably, including by novice designers; I’ll admit I Read Article
The Importance of Having A Modern PCB Manufacturing Data Format The Importance of Having A Modern PCB Manufacturing Data Format I recently posted a BLOG on Altium about the latest eSmart Factory in New Hampshire. Using the latest in State-of-the-Art machinery and processes, it can produce near-perfect complex multilayers and HDI substrates with extremely fine geometries in only a few days, and without ever being helped or touched by human hands, all while and emitting nothing to harm the environment—zero effluents. Digitization for the Smart Factory This technology will Read Article
The eSmart Factory Comes to PCB Fabrication The eSmart Factory Comes to PCB Fabrication We all talk about the Industrial Revolution. The world has gone through a number of “Industrial Revolutions” since the creation of steam power in England. In fact, we talk about three such revolutions since that first one. In the early 2010s, the German Government proposed a fourth industrial revolution they called INDUSTRU 4.0. Today we also call it “The Smart Factory”! But, to date, there hasn’t been too much reported progress in this program Read Article
Can You Hear Me Now? Can You Hear Me Now? Depending on your background and personal experiences, two things may spring to mind when you hear the term “cocktail party problem.” The first is you thinking, “there are never enough cocktails to satisfy everyone’s requirements,” but maybe I’m projecting again. Alternatively, you may be considering how difficult it is for an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled voice-controlled assistant like Amazon’s Alexa to follow individual voices when a Read Article